Digital barbarism

I'm 40 percent done reading the new book by Mark Helprin, "Digital Barbarism" (Kindle Edition). Reading is probably not the right word for it, as the activity here is the mental equivalent of forcing my way through a very thick and prickly underbrush in a swampy forest. It is mostly due to his writing style: dense, convoluted, opaque. I find myself having to frequently re-read his meandering sentences to get at the point he is trying to make. It is quite ironic that at the origin of this book lies a New York Times editorial by Mr. Helprin , in which he proposed extending the term of copyright considerably, and for which he was viciously attacked in comments and blogs. He complains of having been grossly misunderstood, and never having advocated extending the period of copyright protection to infinity, as implied by his attackers. Yet what he wrote in the original article was this: "Congress is free to extend at will the term of copyright. It last did so in 1998, and should do so again, as far as it can throw."  When read extremely carefully (probably more than once), there is nothing in these sentences that explicitly says "forever", and really nobody, not even US Congress, can throw anything into infinity. But can you blame scores of people for reading into these sentences  a desire for infinite extension? Yes, it may be a leap of logic, but a tiny one. And that's the problem with Mr. Helprin: his writing lacks precision, is embellished by his wordsmithing to a point of ambiguity. Some people will claim that he writes beautifully; I'd say, yes, inasmuch as rococo architecture can be considered beautiful.

Aside from my frustration with its language,  there is also the fact that this book is a long, tiresome tirade against the modern world. Mr. Helprin gives a tip of his hat to a few good things modern technology has brought, like improvements in medicine, but this is barely noticeable in the thicket of his million complaints, including things as trivial (OK, silly) as the substitution of pen and paper with the computer as the writer's primary tool. (I am fully cognizant of the irony of my reading his book on Kindle, the latest incarnation of the "machine" he seems to despise...). 

All in all, this book has been a huge disappointment so far, all the more that I basically agree with many of his points, and share his fear  that the support beams of our culture are being turned into dust by swarms of vicious, insatiable termites, whose damaging power is amplified by technology. There are several species of these termites, with different names, including: the Open Source "movement", music "sharing" networks, Creative Commons, etc, but with the same endgame in mind: replacing our property-based society with one based on the old, utopian ideal of "contribute what you can, take what you need". (Given our imperfect nature, this ideal very quickly degenerates into "contribute as little as possible, grab as much as you can get away with", resulting in economical and societal deterioration. XX century has given us plenty of examples of that pathway, but some people still think they can do it better "next time".) 

We're very much in need of powerful, precise critics of all that is wrong with the new, "digital" culture, and by golly, there is plenty: from the above mentioned termites, to the sense of entitlement with no bounds ("I want, therefore I am. I am, therefore I shall have"); to the worship of mob rule hidden behind oxymorons like "wisdom of the crowds" or "smart mobs"; to the maniacal tearing down of livelihoods and entire industries, of which newspapers are the latest victim. This criticism, however, cannot be just a temper tantrum, but has to be able to see this unfolding transformation from more than one angle; after all, neither the music industry, nor the newspaper business are entirely blameless in bringing their own demise. Unfortunately, Mr. Helprin is not that kind of critic, and  that's OK, as long as his failure on this front does not discourage others.

Managers and leaders

A good quote I heard a few days ago:

Managers make sure we do things right. Leaders make sure we do the right thing.

Creative destruction

It is often said that one of the facets of capitalism is "creative destruction": businesses and even entire industries are destroyed to give raise to new products and new ways of making them. Yet rarely do we think of this on the scale of a forest fire, or an earthquake, when all we see around us is massive destruction, with the "creation" part coming much later. Something like the current crisis. This begs the question: is such an orgy of destruction really necessary? Yes, the forest will grow again and new, stronger bridges will replace those that crumbled when the earth shook, but wouldn't it be better if we managed to harvest the timber before it burned, and used the cement to repair the bridges, instead of rebuilding them?

Dumb individuals, smart crowds??

This crisis has many lessons for us, and one of them is that there is no such thing as "wisdom of the crowds" or "smart mob". I don't know who first came up with this nonsense, but it is so obviously stupid that it is hard to believe these phrases actually entered our vocabulary. What is the premise? That a bunch of people who make stupid decisions on their own would somehow be more capable of making correct decisions by being in a large group? Or is it so that their own stupidity is counterbalanced and diluted by the wisdom of others in that group? (But if that's the case, wouldn't we be better off with just the good decision makers, without the need to counterbalance the fools?)

This fallacy was, supposedly, reinforced by the Word Wide Web, which seemed to prove the Marxist thesis that sufficient quantity will transform itself into quality, in other words, a gigantic pile of garbage will create such a pressure that it will beget diamonds.  One has only to read the comments left by readers of articles and blog posts to know that this can't be true.  It is, in fact, rather depressing that so many of us are such idiots. Among the 327 comments left undearneath an excellent interview with Niall Ferguson, there are  "insighful" analyses like this one:

Paul Collins from Canada writes: Niall Ferguson is not the voice of reason but is in fact as mad as those in government and in industry. Those in power are mad if they can hold onto power forever. Nothing lasts forever. THESE PEOPLE ARE MAD!

Sure, this drivel is outnumbered by many more sane - even if negligibly so - comments, but how does this make the crowd of commenters smarter? Garbage does not produce diamonds, just makes them more difficult to find.

The opportunity in front of us

The current economic crisis is big and scary, but we would all be much better served viewing it as the huge opportunity it is. (Not unlike the tragedy of 9/11, which was a golden opportunity - to push us toward energy independence among other things -  largely squandered later.) It is an opportunity to remake our deeply flawed economic system based on fake prosperity of living beyond our means instead of building real prosperity. I'm therefore quite encouraged by President Obama's apparent thinking on some of the crucial issues that will determine our future: federal budget deficit, healthcare costs, alternative energy, infrastructure. Of course, at the same time I am deeply unnerved by so much power being given to the Democrat-dominated Congress, who will use the excuse of this crisis to go nuts printing money and spending like a drunken sailor more for political than for economic gain. (You don't have to look very closely at the just passed Stimulus Bill to see a pork-laden train. )

There is plenty of worry to go around, including the fact that things will most likely get much worse before they start getting any better, or that there will be a big shift of economic power from debtors (Europe and the US) to creditors (China and Middle East), but if we play this thing right and hold the course, we may emerge with a much more sane and stable system within the next decade.  I am optimistic that we're smart enough to do that.

Are we going to die from it?

I admit, that for a while I doubted that the recession was real. There is no point denying it, since I wrote about my doubts in this very blog. I thought that the media was feeding us stories about recession in order to make sure that a Democrat wins the upcoming presidential election. Well, the recession is very real, although I still believe that the media has a role in making it bigger than it actually would have been. A lot of what is going on is psychological, especially on the important level of consumer spending. Consider than in Michigan, one of the states most severely impacted by the recession, the unemployment is at 10 percent. That is about 4 percent more than the pre-recession level. However, the change in consumer spending is several orders of magnitude greater than the change in unemployment. A friend of mine told me that her business fell by 50 percent - this in relatively affluent Ann Arbor, which is faring much better than the rest of the state; in other places the predicament of small businesses is dire.

Since 95 percent of Michiganders did not see a change in their employment status, what accounts for this profound pullback? In large part, I think, this is fear, driven by the incessant barrage of bad news coming from the media. Having heard the phrase , "since the Great Depression" (as in: "The biggest drop in market capitalization since the Great Depression", "The worst holiday shopping season for retailers since the Great Depression", etc)  half a dozen times per day, an American consumer, like the groundhog, hides back in his lair, ensuring that winter will last longer than hoped. Not surprisingly, the fear of recession will make the recession worse.

Why do the media do that? Mostly it's because that's what the media is about: they cling to the idea that only bad news sells, so they'll whip it up for as long as they are able to get people's attention. If there are multiple ways to tell a story, and multiple angles from which to look at it - you can rest assured that the most frightening angle will be presented to the readers or viewers. I also suspect that the election plays some role still: having succeeded in getting Obama elected president, the jubilant media would like to ensure that any good news about the economy does not start coming while Bush is still in office, so that his "legacy" remains as dark as possible. After all, it is bad enough that the war in Iraq appears to be pointing toward success, so the public's attention must be driven away from that, and toward the bleak state of the economy. It will really be interesting to watch whether the tone in the media starts shifting toward more optimism in the later half of January... I do hope that it does, and not because it will prove my point, but primarily because it may help us heal. The media's role so far has been akin to a relative from hell visiting you while you are sick with a bad flu, and telling you stories about avian influenza, and how many people die of flu each year, and the complications you may end up with, and how you had infected many of your coworkers, so now everybody hates your guts, etc. Would it be nice if they told us, for a change, that everything will be alright, and that we've overcome much worse in the past? Is it too much to ask?